A Random Snippet of My Workplace Conversation

ME: It’s Newton’s 3rd Law.
K: What? No it’s not. What?
ME: Yeah. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.
K: What does that have to do with anything?
ME: Well that’s what would make the pony on rollerskates go forward if you blast a fire extinguisher in the opposite direction.
J: I’m so sorry I missed the first part of that conversation.

Rebecca leads a team of skeptical female activists at Skepchick.org. She travels around the world delivering entertaining talks on science, atheism, feminism, and skepticism. There is currently an asteroid orbiting the sun with her name on it. You can follow her every fascinating move on Twitter or on Google+.

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Me: So how important is this project?
Boss: It’s important. Real important. I mean I think that we-
Me: How important is it in dollars that you want to spend?
Boss: I don’t want to spend anything.
Me: How much do you want to pay me to work on this?
Boss: You’ve done enough.

Rebecca, Oh thank you so much. I have the pleasure of working with other people who understand physics and other sciences, but rarely do I appreciate it. It is good, occasionally, to be reminded of that. Also it is good, occasionally, that I should be reminded not to attempt to spell, “occasionally” without spell check, since I had to dictionary search it. Aren’t stereotypes great!

One day when I was walking through our work lunchroom I overheard a conversation between a male (a manager) and some females. The females were saying how hard it was to find a guy to get serious with . The manager said that for every male born there were like ten females born and the large disparity in numbers was why it was hard to find a guy. He was not joking! Luckily , internet was available so I went back to my desk found the last US census and printed out the page showing the total numbers of males and females and their percentages. He was all embarrassed when I gave it to them. Don’t people take basic biology in high school? Also just looking around with an open mind would clue you in that there aren’t ten girls born for every boy.

Okay, well, I suggested we quit our jobs and join the circus. First I suggested the two of us could be in the Sphere of Death together, riding motorcycles. My coworker said she had always wanted to be the one standing on the back of a pony riding around the ring. As a compromise, I suggested we ride ponies around the Sphere of Death. She pointed out that we’d need to get the ponies to reach a higher speed in order to do loops. I suggested rollerskates and fire extinguishers. Then, the above.